Dog Shit
The digestive system of your dog begins
at the lips and finishes under the tail, at a puckering donut-shaped curiosity
scientists have nicknamed the anus. When you see a dog (or cat) who
appears to be licking his or her own balls, it's more likely the animal is
suffering from anal gland disease. Both
the external anal sphincter and anal sac can become impacted or infected as
the result of contaminants left behind by the anus, leading to feelings of
pain and pressure best relieved by several hours of enthusiastic licking. The
domesticated dog's alternative to licking is Cells in a dog's body naturally generate waste by-products which must
be eliminated through the kidneys, the lungs, the skin and digestive system.
These organs are part of a larger excretory
system. Of course, not everything a dog eats can be digested properly,
or even used to store energy. The unwanted digestive material left behind
on city sidewalks and community In Sydney, Australia, one can find over 100 tons of fresh dog shit dumped on the ground each day. Rich in phosphorous, Australian dog shit washes down hills after torrential rains, killing plant life. There used to be an old joke: How do you tell an American in Paris? He's the one picking the shit up after his dog. Americans stopped picking up dog shit a long time ago, preferring instead to pantomime picking up dog shit when witnesses at the dog park are present but still too far away to see if there's really anything in your hand. It's been universally acknowledged that France has the worst metropolitan dog shit problem. Each day, Parisian sidewalks, alleys and gutters are choked to excess with ten tons of golden brown, oven-baked baguettes left behind by the city's 200,000 dogs. It's been estimated that in a single year, six hundred people break a limb after slipping on French dog shit—and in recent years, failure-to-pick-up fines have grown to five hundred dollars per loaf.
Every few months, dog shit gets tracked in by the news. Investigators discover "rooms filled with dog feces" in homes where neglected, emaciated children await rescue. Hundreds of animals are liberated from "cages lined with filthy dog droppings," in the homes of animal hoarders. Inevitably, whenever police storm into a person's home and encounter piles of garbage, the chances of discovering "piles of dog shit" are exponentially increased.
If the idea of feeding, walking, and playing with fake dogs doesn't tickle your fancy, maybe you'd prefer a house full of fake dog shit, which comes in a variety of shapes. Machine-molded plastic dollops and rubberized poostuffs are key staples of novelty shops around the world. This "gag" gift makes it possible for apartment dwellers (or the financially disadvantaged) to circumvent traditional health code regulations and simulate the everyday presence of dogs in their homes or offices. Fake dog shit really fills the void.
Dateline Germany, January 2005. Police in the sleepy hamlet of Bayreuth are in a bit of a pickle. Someone—or something—is jamming miniature toothpick flag portraits of U.S. President George W Bush into piles of dog shit on sidewalks, public parks, and pedestrian thoroughfares. Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth, said: "This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that time."
In 2006, the dog shit Bush parade is still going strong. Police say they are completely baffled as to who might be responsible. "We have sent out extra patrols to try to catch whoever is doing this in the act," said police spokesman Reiner Kuechler. "But frankly, we don't know what we would do if we caught them red handed." Legal experts claim there's no law against using dog shit as a flag stand, although Federal legal analysts warn the Constitution is vague on the issue. One possible source of all the dog shit flags has been identified only as the makeyouthink online entity, which offers downloadable PDF templates for printing, folding, and concealing in a backpack.
To be sure, dog shit is annoying and problematic in every country—but
is it really subject matter capable of depositing a huge, flaming
bag of controversy on the entire world's doorstep? The dog pooped right next to the old man and [the girl] was embarrassed so she said to dog, "What's wrong? You have not done that before!" She had many bags to carry so she was embarrassed. She didn't know what to do at the time. So my girlfriend took out a tissue from her bag and gave it to her and the old man, me and my girlfriend, gave her some space. She said thank you. And she sat down and cleaned the dog's anus with the tissue. I was ten meters distance from her. "Hey, you have to clean the poop, too. If you bring the dog, you have to be responsible for that," I yelled at her.
I took out my camera and I was taking pictures and pushing her to clean the poop, but she didn't say anything. She was just looking at her dog and petting it. The subway way train got to Ahyun Station and when the doors open, she got off. At that time, she said something rude to the ajumma. Miss Kim, armed with digital and cellular photography equipment, snapped several quick pictures of the offending scene, making sure the girl's face was as visible as the dog shit, and extending the narrative pastiche to include other subway patrons begrudgingly cleaning up the dog shit for her. When Miss Kim returned home, she uploaded the images to her personal website, where they existed for many weeks accompanied by exactly the sort of "outrageous, what kind of ridiculous Paris Hilton world are we all living in" text one might glance at briefly in a blog but never actually read. But people did read, and yes, they were furious. How can you not want to rub her nose in it? The image was instantly popular, sparking a nation-wide dog shit hunt. The girl in the photograph became the subject of one of the earliest Internet memes in Eastern history, and quickly earned a new nickname: Gae-Ttong-Nyue, or "puppy poo girl"—encouraging the Western translation of Dog Shit Girl. Viewers zoomed in on portions of the image: the dog, the bag, the girl's watch. Within days, she would be found and "punished" by an online mob, with a campaign of ridicule, harassment, impenetrable JPEG parodies, shaming techniques and all-out intimidation.
"I know I was wrong, but you guys are so harsh. I'm regret it, but I was so embarrassed so I just wanted to leave there. I was very irritable because many people looked at me and pushed me to clean the poop. Anyhow, I'm sorry. But, if you keep putting me down on the Internet I will sue all the people and at the worst I will will commit suicide. So please don't do that anymore." It should be noted that The Washington Post did not have the courage to call Dog Shit Girl by her full and complete alias, preferring instead to call her Dog Poop Girl.
Ever heard of Chinese mud flaps? Sure you have: they're snug, split-open half-pants which allow toddlers in China, India, and Kenya to run around naked from the waist down, dongs flapping in the breeze and buttocks exposed. When it's time for these kids to take a shit, they can do so quickly and easily—even when they're right in the middle of playing jump rope! Chinese mud flaps also simplify the process of helping a young one squat over a hole, a common sight in regions of China unencumbered by modern architecture. Can Western civilization be far... "behind"?
And now you can get Chinese mud flaps for your dog, so he can shit everywhere without getting his pants dirty! What a country! Everywhere you look, every time you turn around, it all comes back to dog shit.
Well, certainly when trod upon at the scene of a crime, police can examine or identify footprints, tire tracks, and threaded bicycle trails by closely examining a pile of dog shit. And surely to some extent it could be collected en masse by special interest groups and used to fertilize the White House rose garden. And is it any wonder that some of the world's most popular snack treats are coiled, curly-cued, or otherwise fashioned in proud dollops which resemble the substance? It's true! You're the man now, dog shit.
And look at those lincoln-log-shaped peanut butter filled pretzels sprinkled with enormous salt crystals like the kind you'd see in the laboratory of a sewage treatment plant. Christ, they're awful. So are Cheetos Cheese Puffs which quite frankly mirror the individually placed, cylindrical cross-sectionals of orange dog shit stiffening on the lawn after several days of exposure. Softly served ice cream treats such as the kind dispensed at fast food restaurants like Dairy Queen or Foster's Freeze are not above an appropriate level of comparison, either. And never one to eschew obfuscation, the McDonald's restaurant corporation strictly insists all their frosty dog shit swirls be referred to as kiddie cones in store menus, drive-thru windows and braille supplements throughout North America. |